game fish

[Redsoxticket]

The fishing clubs from Maine to New Jersey must have tens of thousands of members.
The leaders of these clubs can come up with a mutual organized strategic plan that involves it members to rally to voice the issues that are important to the bass fishery. The media would more likely be there to create more exposure.

[snake slinger]

thanks for enlihtening me.i ges we need pogies forever not stripers forever.

[The Iceman 6]

I will say that in 2006 menhadden (@ least in CT) where everywhere. Hope 2007 has the same results. I for one forgot what they looked like....it was a great site seeing them thick in the rivers and inlets.

Ice

[GoFish]

The Hudson and Chesappeake are toxic resulting in impaired breeding of bass and bait, and poor juvenile bass nutrition. (Someone posted a great article here last year that suggested the reason bass, historically finfish predators, have adapted to grubbing and bottom feeding is that they spend their first few years feeding in estuaries where you couldn't see a baitfish even if there was one left.)

You have commercial "protein" interests vacuuming the remaining bait up out of the oceans at obscene rates, just as the draggers are turning the bottoms into wastelands. Once the bait (including lobster, and crab) population is gone what hope is there up the food chain? Not likely that the bass will be the "last man standing" when everything else in the ocean is gone.

Can't put it on the commercial guys, we take a lot of fish ourselves. Can't put it on either political party as both have their hands out to the same commercial interests under our current system of "government for sale."

Don't have a solution. Though I'll tell you I think long and hard before keeping the few fish I do...

[snake slinger]

maybe iam wrong if so please correct me but i dont see how the hudson and chesappeake are more toxic today than they were 30 years ago when mills were dumping toxins in the water daily.

[GoFish]

Originally Posted by snake slinger

maybe iam wrong if so please correct me but i dont see how the hudson and chesappeake are more toxic today than they were 30 years ago when mills were dumping toxins in the water daily.

GE Plastics may not be dumping PCBs any more and many of the more visible manufacturing offenders have been shut down, but runoff of overused petroleum-based fertilizers remains a huge and growing problem. (If 100 gallons per acre is recommended 200 must be better, right?) Particularly in the Chesapeake. PCBs don't kill bass and bait (though they kill those of us who eat the bass) fertilizers do.

Industrial agriculture is a much more widespread and less visible problem than the manufacturers whose smokestacks and outflows make a killer photo op to rally public opposition. Corporate agriculture is heavily subsidized by us, is allowed to pretty much write public policy, and operates largely below the radar.

Sorry if I'm getting off-topic and political, but it's a huge threat to the fishery.

[Rockport24]

Originally Posted by Redsoxticket

The fishing clubs from Maine to New Jersey must have tens of thousands of members.
The leaders of these clubs can come up with a mutual organized strategic plan that involves it members to rally to voice the issues that are important to the bass fishery. The media would more likely be there to create more exposure.

this is a good point and maybe that would have an effect, but everybody has their own interests and opinions, trying to get 10,000 fisherman to agree that the main threat to striped bass is the bait fish problem is a difficult enough task, let alone getting them to moblize on the issue. I mean, we can't all agree how to hook a damn eel!
The fact of the matter is that companies like Omega have such a vested interest in what they do that I'm sure they will fight to the death to protect it. I'm not saying there is not a way.
It's just when it comes down to it, I think we just don't "care" as much.